


Hear Me, A Heart Not Yet Turned Cold

by cassandra_leeds (The_Circadian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Dean is a goat herding recluse who's seen too much, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Martyrdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Circadian/pseuds/cassandra_leeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is living his life the best he can despite the losses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hear Me, A Heart Not Yet Turned Cold

After the Storm Times, the Fire Times, and the Great Silence, after nearly five and ten years of slow and steady healing, the green tentatively begins to return to the land beneath the mountain, and with it eventually the town folk come back too, quietly coming in through the grasses and trees below like families of mice ready to make the most of fertile space. The land at the base of the Mountain that once rained fire has been quiet for decades, but now the children of those who ran from Hell on Earth have their own children and are returning to rebuild and grow their small seeds of hope.

Dean has been the sole inhabitant of the area for miles these last fifteen years and he has made do on his own. He is a goat herder and a gardener and a hunter – a hermit. And, until these last few years, an unbothered hermit. Now there are others living close enough to travel to him in an afternoon, children playing close enough down below to hear from mouth of his cave if the goats and the winds are quiet.

He is silver haired and hard eyed and no one gets more than five words out of him at a time, now he has neighbors to trade with. He has wrinkles around his eyes, though the only souls he smiles at are his goats. Sometimes someone who has traveled far up enough to chance he won’t trade that day, and sometimes they bring a young child who isn’t scared of him and wants to see what he’s whittling, who finds that the dark, gamey smell of goats on him comforting.

People know him as the Hill Man. He’s never given his name to anyone who comes up to trade with him, much more content to be no one to them at all if he could choose. But he knows some of the older folk know him from a time before, remember his cries and knocks on their doors telling them to leave everything and save yourselves, go, run! He can tell because those people stare as if waiting for some kind of recognition from Dean. Dean never gives it to them.

He has a kind of attractiveness about him though despite his demeanor, a rough kind of beauty the women of the town often linger their eyes over. There is enough to piece together that once he was a very handsome youth. But that young man is mostly an unknown, save for stories. His history is mostly hearsay now. He’s a legend in whispers. They say he was a hunter of evil things and gods and that he had a brother once. That once he was in love with a creature greater than the mountain but not powerful enough to stop the Fires, that now he is in hiding, or retired, or paying for his deeds. That he “chose the world over love,” whatever that means.

In the last fifteen years he has lived alone but he was not always alone. Most hermits, he figures, were not always alone. But he cannot go back to a before except in one small corner of his heart, when he touches the cool, hard surface of his losses and remembers when his bed was warm once.

  


Dean had begged him not to do it. He remembers how he’d screamed through the smoke at Castiel, fire raining down, that the other angels had won - Castiel’s life wasn’t worth it. _Please don’t…_

The explosions were deafening but he saw Castiel speak, read his lips through the fire and flame:

_It’s enough that you might survive…_

Dean can’t remember the last few moments of Cas, even when he tries. It was too loud and too bright, atmosphere dropping so suddenly Dean must have passed out. But he wishes he could forget more.

When he came to he was choking and clawing his way to the only thing he could see through the falling ash – Castiel’s figure standing cool and resigned in the center of the clearing. Dean made it to him, placed his hand to his Castiel’s and found not flesh but stone there. Castiel, Angel of the Lord, now as hard and cold as granite.

Dean wept for a long time. He wept harder and longer than when Sam had left, not because the loss was greater, but because he knew he was truly and utterly alone now.

He beat on Castiel’s solid chest like a door until his knuckles bled and sat at his feet in silence until the blood had dried on his bruised fingers.

Dean couldn’t leave it out for nature to wear away though. After two nights staring at the walls of the makeshift home they had made together in this cave in the middle of what would be a warzone, now a wasteland, Dean pulled himself out of the grief and anger long enough to realize he would have to figure out a way to get it back here with him.

He fashioned a system over the next few months that inch by inch brought Cas back to their home. What was left of him.

He can still remember those months as a new and different Hell than he had ever experienced in his life - pulling and pulling in the sun and rain and loose earth. And even when finally he had placed Cas back in the cave, the clarity of not actually having Cas back left the air heavier in his lungs and his weight harder to carry from that night onwards.

But time passes and he’d found a stray couple of goats, bred them, cultivated a garden. He set up traps for small game. He was able to live well enough on his own. Years when by where the only sounds he made were whistles at the goats and the occasional song sung under his breath.

He stopped being angry after a while. He knew his brother was gone. He knew Cas was gone. But he had a life and he was surviving and if by some miracle Cas could still hear his prayers he’d know that sometimes he was happy to be alive. He was.

  


A rain is coming in, Dean knows by the smell on the air and he closes the flap down and the mouth of his cave and lays the sand bags down along the base of the threshold to keep out the downpour. His goats are all inside with him, sleeping piled on each other and filling the space with heat. Dean lights a candle and looks to the back of his cave as he does every night. He stares at Cas’ face in the flickering light and it’s like it’s moving for a moment. Cas’ face is still as young as the day he died, but still so sad to go.

So many nights Dean has stared at that young face and wondered what will become of it when he inevitably passes on from this world. He thinks about it often.

Dean walks up and adjusts the old coat he has slung around Cas’ shoulders, places his hand to Cas’ cold cheek, and then steps up to lean his own against him. He holds him and listens. He hears the goats breathing deep in slumber and hears rain start to fall outside. Somewhere down below in the village a new baby is crying at the thunder that rumbles the hills around them, but is filled with life instead of the terror of years past. For a moment Dean hopes, lets himself imagine that it will bring Cas back, that he can if the storm can’t, that when he opens his eyes there will be blue eyes looking into his and his name roughly breathed in bafflement and love.

But when Dean opens his eyes, of course it’s not. The stone is warmer under his hand from his heat, that’s all.  _That would be too easy for us, huh?_  Dean breathes, laughs out a bitter laugh, surprised after all this time it still hurts to hope, he’s surprised he even does sometimes.

He settles into bed and blows out the light, one of the goats turns around to re position itself, a few others wake and stare out at the rain like they’ve never seen rain in their lives. The baby is silent finally and Dean realizes how grateful he is to be able to have had this too even if he lost so much along the way. It’s worth it to know that Castiel did what he meant to do, the deal was met, the world saved, and Dean is no hero but he has more peace than he probably would have found in death. He places his hand on his chest and feels his heartbeat the way Cas used to a lifetime ago and remembers that it was enough for Cas. It should be enough for him.

There is a small gritting sound as Dean starts to drift off that has him on high alert – still, but ready, gripping the knife under his pillow.

There’s a crumbling and a gasping shout and lightning fills the space as Dean spins over to see Castiel, dirty and on his knees, naked in the rubble, still youthful and wide eyed and alive.

Alive.

Dean doesn’t know how he does it so fast but he pulls Cas to him, into bed with him, presses his hands on all of Cas he can to make sure he’s real, every inch pliant and warm and dusty. He pushes grit out of his hair, brushes it from his eyelids as Castiel tries to speak. Dean can’t speak either. Dean wants to but wants him closer far more than anything, the feel of Cas’ chest heaving for air the most beautiful thing he could imagine ever feeling. He kisses him and Cas tastes like clay, but underneath that and the longer he kisses, he tastes a familiar flavor from long past - Castiel’s own flavor that he can’t believe he had forgotten until now it’s so intensely interwoven into Dean heart. Just like the smell of Cas, under the earthy scent, a darker sour smell like citrus or pine. Just like the sound of Castiel’s voice, right now just the garbled moans of someone come up from almost drowning, but Cas’ voice none the less, so much a part of Dean he doesn’t know how it’s been so long since he’s heard it. Even Castiel’s flesh under his hand is like a song Dean has known all his life.

Dean finally speaks, more words flowing out of him than he knew he could say at once anymore.  _Please don’t let me be dreaming, please god…_

Castiel wraps his arms around him weakly, holds him as tightly as he can manage. _I’m here,_  Castiel chokes out, both a reassurance and wonder at that fact, fingers tensing over Dean’s back. _I’m here, Dean._

For once Dean doesn’t wait for the world to take it away so that he can learn to lose and live. For once he holds on and doesn’t expect the payment for this will be to give it up again. He kisses Castiel again though. And if there is any doubt in Dean’s mind, if there is any part of him left that questions Cas being alive and real and permanent, Castiel breathes it away, soft two little words exhaled into Dean’s chest.

_I promise._


End file.
